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Salt Island BVI Like You’ve Never Seen it Before

There is something beautiful about abandoned places…Their charm lies somewhere between an overgrown landscape all wild and free and that intangible imprint left by the people who called it home.
It’s that thing that gives you goose bumps.

That’s Salt Island.

We love to share this place with people.
A Cole’s notes version of it’s history is a place where in it’s hey day, it had a population of 300.
They all died or moved away.
The island has no one living on it anymore.

This visit to Salt totally blew us away.

As a late wedding present we took our friends away for a sailing weekend in BVI.
Here’s the happy couple:

Wiley has been with us for 95 blog posts, actually since BEFORE we started documenting our journey.
He’s a great friend and we wanted to do something special.
Well we all got something special this weekend.

But first it was time to explore a little. Next to abandoned farm houses and the like my next fascination lies with gnarly old trees.

This was the super creepy yet beautiful tire swing in the front yard of the main house.

As the geeks we are, me with my cell in hand ready for every possible photo op and Wiley with his drone we explored the area.

When you think about it this picture is the perfect contrast between the old (falling down building) and the very modern (a drone).

Again a cool tree, I can’t help it. Here’s the thing, obviously someone else thought it was a cool tree too cause they built this lovely bench round it 🙂

Looks like just a pretty girl in a bikini holding a cigar in front of a mucky pond right?
Look closer…

At first it doesn’t register.. Looks like sand or something but in actuality that is Stevo attempting to make a ‘saltman’.

We are sitting on Sea Salt!
All that white is beautiful crystallized sea salt.
The way it forms along the water’s edge is eerily familiar to our Canadian frozen pond roots!

That little rowboat has salt climbing all over it. Nature is amazing!
This is possibly the best spa foot treatment in the history of my life anyways.

If you saw this picture out of the context of this blog this could be mistaken for some ridiculously beautiful white sand beach somewhere but no – all salt!

As the water recedes the salt grows. At this point of the season we were experiencing very little rain.
So perfect conditions for salt growth!

Walking out into the water was painful! The salt under water is very jagged. But what a great pic!

I know it’s jagged in there because I tried it myself – did not make it as far as Stevo.

The salt crystals were amazing.

Trying to capture what we’re seeing for y’all I poked a hole through the salt layer (which incidentally moves just like the shallow part of a frozen lake).
The water underneath is HOT not just warm HOT.
My mind immediately registers this as ice fishing, it’s weird.

Someone took the time to create this before the salt came.
When you are wandering around this abandoned piece of paradise you feel like you’re the only one who’s ever visited until you find something like this.
It seems so amazing and out of place at the same time.

So we added to it…

Wonder if it’s still there?

In a place so dry and seemingly devoid of life I’m amazed at the ability for a tree (or any plant) to spring forth from a rock and not only grow but blossom.
Check it out:

Speaking of blossoms let me tell you about the bees we encountered here.
First off we all know that bees are important to our survival.
I can’t help but feel concerned when I find random bees dead on the boat.
Perhaps they were buzzing around and didn’t see the 46 foot boat with the 70 foot mast approaching and it was a hit and sail, an honest collision.
Orrrr…bees are dropping dead out of the sky because of something we humans have done which is actually contributing to the demise of our race as a result.
Mellow dramatic, maybe – maybe not.

We get to the boat to get some supplies (beer) and there are bees everywhere (live ones whew!).
They are not acting aggressively and we can actually walk right through them and they just keep buzzing around.
It’s strange there’s no food or drink left out anywhere yet here they are.

As I step over to the sink remarking at how weird this bee thing is more than a handful fly up at me when I turn the tap on.
So I step away.
Ok I scream and step away but they don’t follow me.
I stand there watching them for a minute.

It’s the water puddles in the sink that are attracting them.
They are sitting completely saturated in the water, drinking it I assume.

This beautiful but harsh environment has the bees searching for salt free water.
They came out to the boat for it.
Amazing.

Then I start wondering about the goats and that one really chunky rooster we saw – where do they get their water?
All these animals (and trees) are somehow growing and blossoming on this very salty, hot island.
Survival.

We head back to the beach with our supplies (beer) and do what must be done when you are confronted with a salt landscape…

Make Salt Angels of course!!!
To be honest this hurt a bit but again when will we have the opportunity to do this again?
Not that we ever aspired to this type of activity but it presented itself and there we were exfoliating our arms, too funny.

While we stared up into the sky we had another surprise:

It’s a Sun Dog and that itty bitty x to the left is the drone.

Yes there is actual footage of our Salt Angels in video format.
There’s the cool part of our geekyness, we know how to revert back to our 5 year old selves AND capture it on film – brilliance!